Impact of simplifying website and removing 80% of site's content

[RG_SEO]

We're thinking of simplifying our website which has grown to a very large size by removing all the content which hardly ever gets visited.

The plan is to remove this content / make changes over time in small chunks so that we can monitor the impact on SEO. My gut feeling is that this is okay if we make sure to redirect old pages and make sure that the pages we remove aren't getting any traffic. From my research online it seems that more content is not necessarily a good thing if that content is ineffective and that simplifying a site can improve conversions and usability.

Could I get people's thoughts on this please? Are there are risks that we should look out for or any alternatives to this approach? At the moment I'm struggling to combine the needs of SEO with making the website more effective.

[ReferralCandy]

I have to agree with you on making this move. Content that doesn't contribute to the quality of your site and receives minimal traffic should be removed. Besides ensuring the redirects are set properly, you can evaluate if these old content do actually make good material for future writing. It would be a waste to just delete them without any second thoughts. Some snippets of these old content can still prove useful and be spinned into new articles once you elaborate on them.

[RG_SEO]

Great answers guys - thanks. It's good to know that my gut feeling was close to the mark!

[simon_realbuzz]

Quality over quantity is definitely the order of the day, but before you drop some content completely, take a look at it and see if there is some useful info contained in it which could be consolidated into some of the content that you are actually retaining. Overall though a good content audit can be a good thing even if it means dropping some pages. Here's a useful article regarding content audits which is well worth taking a look at.

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Sounds like a good idea to me. Make sure you have all the redirects in place to make sure when people want to visit the old content they're redirected to the new content. Also make sure you monitor the rest of your sites SEO traffic to make sure you don't fall in a hidden trap.

[Ron_McCabe]

I think this pruning process makes sense. Although this will potentially decrease key words it will streamline the navigation for the content that is actually getting traffic.  This will provide a better flow and potentially a lower bounce rate. Staging these cuts and monitoring the changes seems like a good way to manage your risk.